How better to keep the ones that do come, there's the rub.
Yep thats it.
Lets say, BB has a 30% retention rate over 6 months. that is, new users who sign up, are still playing 6 months later.
If 2 years ago, they were getting 1000 new users every week, thats 300 retained users.
If this year, they only got 200 in the last week, then thats only 60 retained users.
Thats a massive difference. And then proportionally, number of supporters.
However, Im under the assumption that, the reason why they implemented Utopia, was because the number of long-term users dropping off was massive. But im only guessing. BB would have these numbers, we can only speculate really.
As long as BB can maintain a steady flow of new users, and a steady retention %, then the game should be ok. I dont think they are going to be able to change the game in order to increase the 'new user retention %'. They can however try to increase the number of new users, which proportionally increases the number of users retained.
anyways, i think ive blabbed enough :)